The Cyber Defense eMagazine August Edition for 2023

It doesn’t have to be.
First, we need to think more proactively – reacting to incident alerts and then scrambling to identify the
best response leaves adversaries with an advantage. But proactive security certainly has its challenges;
trying to spot looming threats has been dismissed as too difficult and expensive.
Frankly, wading through millions of data points is not a human-scale problem. Without tools to effectively
process, analyze, and prioritize data, these internal clues often remain undetected, or are discovered
forensically, long after attacks have occurred.
Today’s security challenges are less about detection than they are about connecting the dots. With the
growing number of tools, there is lots of overlap, and adding new tools has diminishing returns. Ultimately,
we need better ways to integrate, connect, and orchestrate action across the security tools we already
have.
St. Margaret’s serves as a stark reminder of the worst-case scenario for a small healthcare organization.
Without enough resources to invest in robust security, updated systems, and without having a clear
recovery plan, these important local providers can be put out of business, leaving their communities with
limited – if any – healthcare services.
This is an industry-wide problem, yet we expect our under-resourced teams to defend themselves against
perpetual threats. Visibility is critical to detection. Automation is critical to scale. Intelligence and alerting
are critical in order to take action. But we can’t rely solely on independent tools. We must invest in
pragmatic systems that can integrate, share, and contextualize quickly, reliably, and with confidence, and
make these capabilities available as managed services for smaller organizations.
About the Author
Emily L. Phelps has written about and worked in the cybersecurity space for nearly
a decade. Throughout her career, she has helped translate complex technical
material into digestible insights for business leaders, and she has supported
cybersecurity initiatives and solutions in order to assist practitioners in their day-today
work. Emily is a fierce advocate for pragmatic cybersecurity programs that
enable organizations to operate, uninterrupted, by cyber threats.
Emily can be reached on Twitter at @CywareCo and at the Cyware website:
https://cyware.com/
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